BOOK XIX. xxTx. 91-XXX. 94 



it is very wholesome when blended ^vith sweet things. 

 There are several ways of overcoming its acridity 

 and rendering it agreeable : it is dried and pounded 

 into flour and seasoned with some sweot juice, or it 

 is boiled or kept in soak in vinegar and water, or 

 steeped in various ways, and then mixed with boiled 

 down grape-juice or flavoured with honey or raisins or 

 juicy dates. Another method again is to flavour it 

 with quinces or sorbs or plums, and occasionally with 

 pepper or thyme, making it a tonic particularly 

 salutar}^ for a weak digestion ; it has become specially 

 stimulating from having been the daily diet of Julia 

 the daughtcr of Augustus. Its seed is superfluous, 

 as it is propagated hke a reed, from eyes cut out of 

 the root ; it also, hke the skirret and the parsnip, is 

 planted at either season, spring or autumn, with 

 large spaces left between the plants — for elecampane 

 not less than a yard, because it throws out shoots over 

 a wide space. Skirret is better transplanted. 



XXX. Next after these in natural properties are Buibs: 

 the bulbs ", whioh Cato particularly recommends for anUaih^^" 

 cultivation, specially praising the Megarian kind. ^an^ties. 

 But the most famous bulb is the squill, although it viii. 2. 

 naturally serves as a drug and is used for increasing 

 the sourness of vinegar; and no other bulb is of 

 larger size, just as also no other has a more powerful 

 pungency. There are two kinds used for medicine, 

 the male squill with white leaves and the female 

 squill with dark leaves ; and there is also a third kind, 

 agreeable as an article of diet, called Epimenides's 

 squill — this has a narrower leaf with a less pungent 

 taste. All produce a very large quantity of seed, 

 though they come up more quickly if grown from the 

 bulbs that shoot out round their sides ; and to make 



481 



